Home buyers of today demand products that are cost-effective, flexible in use, and visually pleasing. In addition, home buyers desire an immense variety of choice in the areas of architectural styles and floor plans. For instance, some buyers may desire homes with traditional floor plans and construction materials while others may prefer more contemporary styles and materials.
In the construction industry, the cost of materials, labor, and land are some factors that are typically taken into account when constructing a building or other structure. In order to reduce the cost of some or all of these factors and still meet the demands of buyers, various materials have been developed such as cement board siding, high efficiency energy saving windows, and engineered wood products. In other examples, prefabrication techniques have been used to construct homes in factories.
Unfortunately, the previous materials, products, and approaches described above have not necessarily decreased the cost of constructing buildings and still meet the design needs of customers. For instance, prefabrication approaches can only provide design versatility at the expense of high fabrication costs. In addition, the quality of the home constructed using such techniques is often inadequate due to the necessity of using low cost materials to reduce the overall home cost. As a result of these problems, previous approaches for home construction have proven inadequate to provide a cost-effective product while at the same time meeting the design requirements of consumers.